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Acta Physica Sinica

A stable long-distance quantum key distribution system

Wu Guang, Chunyuan Zhou, Chen Xiu-Liang, Han Xiao-Hong, Zeng Heping, 华东师范大学物理系，光谱学与波谱学教育部重点实验室，上海 200062

Published Jan 1, 2005• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A stable long-distance quantum key distribution system which has been just completed in our laboratory is demonstrated in this paper. The idea of “plug and pl ay" was adopted to automatically compensate the polarization mode dispersion and phase shift. A symmetrical capacitance-balance technique and magic-T network were used in the single-photon detection module, wherein a detection efficiency of more than 5% and a dark count probability of lower than 29×10-6/p ulse were achieved. As a result, we have realized stable (longer than 12 h) quantum k ey distribution experiment in 506 km single mode fiber with mean photon number of 007 and quantum bit error rate of 4%.

DOI
10.7498/aps.54.3622

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A stable long-distance quantum key distribution system which has been just completed in our laboratory is demonstrated in this paper. The idea of “plug and pl ay" was adopted to automatically compensate the polarization mode dispersion and phase shift. A symmetrical capacitance-balance technique and magic-T network were used in the single-photon detection module, wherein a detection efficiency of more than 5% and a dark count probability of lower than 29×10-6/p ulse were achieved. As a result, we have realized stable (longer than 12 h) quantum k ey distribution experiment in 506 km single mode fiber with mean photon number of 007 and quantum bit error rate of 4%.
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Polarizations of single-photon pulses have been controlled with long-term stability of more than 10 hours by using an active feedback technique for auto-compensation of unpredictable polarization scrambling in long-distance fiber. Experimental tests of long-term operations in 50, 75 and 100 km fibers demonstrated that such a single-photon polarization control supported stable polarization encoding in long-distance fibers to facilitate stable one-way fiber system for polarization-encoded quantum key distribution, providing quantum bit error rates below the absolute security threshold.
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We discuss the possibility of polarization state reconstruction and measurement over 302 km by Superconducting Single-Photon Detectors (SSPDs). Because of the excellent characteristics and the possibility to be effectively coupled to single-mode optical fiber many applications of the SSPD have already been reported. The most impressive one is the quantum key distribution (QKD) over 250 km distance. This demonstration shows further possibilities for the improvement of the characteristics of quantum-cryptographic systems such as increasing the bit rate and the quantum channel length, and decreasing the quantum bit error rate (QBER). This improvement is possible because SSPDs have the best characteristics in comparison with other single-photon detectors. We have demonstrated the possibility of polarization state reconstruction and measurement over 302.5 km with superconducting single-photon detectors. The advantage of an autocompensating optical scheme, also known as plug&play for quantum key distribution, is high stability in the presence of distortions along the line. To increase the distance of quantum key distribution with this optical scheme we implement the superconducting single photon detectors (SSPD). At the 5 MHz pulse repetition frequency and the average photon number equal to 0.4 we measured a 33 bit/s quantum key generation for a 101.7 km single mode ber quantum channel. The extremely low SSPD dark count rate allowed us to keep QBER at 1.6% level. .H\ZRUGV Quantum key distribution, quantum communication , quantum cryptography, superconducting single-photon detectors.